Portable fire-extinguishing apparatus.



R. H. PARKER & W. E. NICKERSON. PORTABLE FIRE EXTINGUISHING APPARATUS.

APPLICATION FILED SEPT. 23, 191 1.

1 ,18 1 1 59. A Patented May 2, 1916.

2 SHEETS-SHEET 1.

Wilfiwses A fwwmfiraj R. H. PARKER & W. E. NICKERSON.

PORTABLE FIRE EXTINGUISHING APPARATUS.

APPLICATION FILED SEPT.23, 1911.

1,181.,1 59. Patented May21916.

2 SHEETSSHEET 2.

THE COLUMBIA PLANOGRAPH c0., WASHINGTON. n. c.

pmnn snares manna orrren RITiEY HERBERT PARKER, F WINTHROP, AND WILLIAM E. NIOKERSON, OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.

PORTABLE FIRE-EXTINGUISHING APPARATUS.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented May 2, 1916.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that we, RILEY HERBERT PARKnR, a citizen of the United States, and

a resident of Winthrop, in the county of Suffolk and State of Massachusetts, and WILLIAM EMERY NICKERSON, a citizen of the United States, and a resident of Cambridge, in the county of Middlesex and State of Massachusetts, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Portable Fire- Extinguishing Apparatus, of which the following is a specification.

This invention relates to portable fire extinguishers such as are commonly located at convenient points in buildings and operate when turned upside down to generate carbonic acid gas in the water with which they are filled and thereby expel the water charged with the gas through a hand nozzle by means of which it may be directed upon a fire, the object of our invention being to provide a mechanism for use in connection with such an extinguisher whereby it will be caused to operate automatically and discharge its contents on a fire occurring at or adjacent to the extinguisher, in case it has not been operated by hand in the usual Way.

To this end we provide a mounting adapted to be secured to a wall or other suitable support and to carry the extinguisher in such manner that upon the occurrence of a fire adjacent to the extinguisher a releasing device will be operated, whereupon the extinguisher will automatically turn upside down and then discharge its contents through a suitable nozzle. In this connection provision may be made for holding the nozzle in suitable discharging position, and the arrangement is such that the extinguisher may be released from the mounting in case it is desired to make use of the extinguisher by carrying it to a fire and then operating it as usual.

Various mechanisms may be employed for the purpose above described, but a simple and practical embodiment of our invention is illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which,

Figure l is a front elevation, partly in sect on. showing the extin uisher in its normal or upright position; Fig. 2 is a similar view showing the back side of the extinguisher; Fig. 3 is a side elevation showing the extinguisher carried in the same pos tion by a supporting wall, Fig. 4 is a detall view showing a supporting bearing and releasing mechanism hereinafter described; Figs. 5 and 6 are transverse sectional views showing details of the construction near the top and bottom, respectively, of the frame which carries the extinguisher; and Figs. 7, 8 and 9 are front views of the extinguisher drawn on a smaller scale, and showing the same in upright position. in process of inversion, and in inverted position, respectively.

The extinguisher proper, indicated at 2 in the drawings, may be of any of the wellknown types, being adapted when inverted to discharge its contents through a flexible hose section 3 carrying a nozzle 4 at its extreme end. To the body portion. of the extinguisher 2 is firmly secured a frame 6, which is located at the back of the extinguisher and is preferably attached thereto by means of bands 7 passing around the body of said extinguisher and connected at their ends to the frame 6 by means of bolts 8 passing through slots 9 in said frame, provision being thus made for varying the position of the bands 7 somewhat in a vertical direction, in accordance with the contour of a given extinguisher. On the frame 6 there is provided, at a point slightly below and preferably to one side of the center of gravity of the filled extinguisher, a rearwardly projecting hub 10 carrying a ring 11 mounted to turn on said hub on ball bearings, indicated at 12, and to the wall 13 or other suitable support is firmly secured socket member 14 having a socket 15 with a semicircular bottom adapted to receive the ring 11 but open at its top, a flange 16 being provided at the front edge of said socket to hold said ring against downward or outward movement, with the hub 10 projecting forward therefrom. Above said socket is provided a releasing device preferably comprising a link of fusible solder, shown at 17, which normally connects the upper end of a loose rod 18 with a hook 19 on a fixed rod 20. For convenience of illustration this rod 20 is shown as carried by the socket member 14, with the hook 19 located adjacent to the top of the extinguisher, but in practice saidihook 19 will be located adjacent to the ceiling of the room in which the extinguisher is placed, so that said hook will be quickly affected by the heat of a fire occurring in the room. The lower end of the loose rod 18 is held in a recess formed, in the top of the socket mem her 14, and a pin 21, carried by the upper portion of the frame 6 and projecting rearward therefrom, occupies such a position that under normal conditions. that is, when the extinguisher is supported by the socket member in upright position, said pin 21 is held between the lower portion of the loose rod 18 and an adjacent portion of the socket member 1-(1, said rod 18 being located on that side of the pin 21 toward which said pin tends to move under the influence of the forces which cause the extinguisher to invert itself when released.

As thus constructed the operation is as follows: Under normal conditions the extinguisher is supported by the socket member 1% and is held in upright position by the rod 18 located in front of the pin 21, said rod being maintained in position by the fusible link 17 at its upper end. \Vhile in this condition the extinguisher may readily be disengaged from its support by lifting it bodily until the ring 11 passes out of the open upper end of the socket 15, whereupon the pin 21 may be withdrawn from behind the rod 18 and the extinguisher may be carried to any desired point and utilized in the usual manner. If, however, a fire occurs at a point sufficiently near the link 17 to fuse the same, the upper end of the loose rod 18 will be released by the fusing of said link and the tendency of the extinguisher to invert itself, which may be produced or assisted, if desired, by means of a spring 22 acting on the pin 21, will thereupon throw the upper end of said rod outward, or away from the upper portion of the socket member 1*-l, and said rod will thereupon be disconnected entirely from said socket member, leaving the extinguisher free to invert itself under the influence of gravity by turning in the ring 11, as indicated in Figs. 8 and 9. This will result, of course, in causing the contents of the extinguisher to be discharged through the nozzle &, and in order to distribute such discharge and also hold the hose 3 in suitable position during the discharge we provide a supplementary nozzle 5, which is carried by a suitable bracket 23 secured to the bottom of the extinguisher and has a form of a hollow ball provided with a number of perforations radiating in practically all directions, said nozzle 5 being also provided with a hollow shank of soft rubberor the like, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2, into which the end of the nozzle 4- may be inserted and in which it will be held with sufficient firmness when the extinguisher inverts itself. In case it is desired to operate the extinguisher by hand, the nozzle 1 may be readily withdrawn from the soft rubber shank of the nozzle 5 and pointed in the desired direction, and

Copies-of this patent may bc'obtaincd for "five cents each, by addressing the Commissioner ot' fatentw in order to prevent it from. adhering to the soft rubber of the shank, it wilrbe found convenient to wrap said nozzle 4; with a piece of tissue; paper;;(not shown).

o claim as our invention 1. The combination with a portable fire extinguisher of that type which is adapted to discharge its contents when inverted, of a bearing carried by said extinguisher, a fixed support adaptedto detachably receive said bearing, a releasing device comprising a fusible link, a pin carried by the eXtlIl guisher and normally located behind thereleasing device and a spring acting on said pin in a direction to invert the extinguisher when released.

2. The combination with a portable fire extinguisher of that type which is adapted to discharge its contents when inverted, of a 5 fixed support on which the extinguisher is detachably and rotatably mounted, a pin carried by the extinguisher, arod located in front of the pin and loosely connected at one end to the fixed support, and a fusible link normally connecting the other end of said rod to said support. 1

3. The combination of a portable fire ex tinguisher of that type which is adapted to I discharge its contents when inverted, a flexible hose leading from the top of the extinguisher and havinga discharge nozzle at its free end, a fixed support and means for detachably and rotatably mounting'the extinguisher thereon, means comprising aheatoperated releasing device for normally ho1d-. ing the extinguisher in upright position, and a supplementary discharge nozzle carried by the lower portion of the extinguisher and having means for detachably receiving the discharge nozzle carried by the hose.

1. The combination of a portable fire extinguisher of that type which is adapted to discharge its contents when inverted, a flexible hose carried thereby and having a discharge nozzle, a fixed support and meaii s for detachably and rotatably mounting the, extinguisher thereon, means comprising a heat-operated releasing device for normally holding the extinguisher in upright po'sition, and a supplementary nozzle carried by the extinguisher and having a hollow rub ber shank adapted to detachably receive the end of the discharge nozzle carried by the hose.

tember, 1911.

R. HERBERT PARKER. WILLIAM E. NICKERSON,

Witnesses: I

JosErH T. BRENNAN, HAROLD EVERETT NESBITT.

Washington, D. 0.

In testimony whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names this 21st day of Sep- 

